A crowd of people wait for breakfast and services at the 2012 Homeless Stand Down at the Masonic Temple of Cleveland.Lynn Ischay, The Plain Dealer

Sixteen years ago, Bill Clinton signed an election-year bill "ending welfare as we know it." What he and Congress really did was empower the 50 states to end welfare, period, for too many poor people -- including too many Ohioans.

True, "welfare reform" helped land Clinton a second term, though the biggest reason he won was his hapless Republican opponent, Bob Dole.

Meanwhile, also in the 1990s, Ohio, under Republican Gov. George V. Voinovich, started to scissor its own safety net (example: General Assistance), a move backed by "yes" budget votes from many General Assembly Democrats.

In effect, Clinton's 1996 welfare reform gave states, Ohio included, blocks of money to do pretty much what they wanted for poor people, if, that is, a state met targets for finding jobs for welfare clients. Clients who didn't keep working could be thrown off welfare. Presto: Problem "solved" -- statistically. That's the American way: "We have a program for that."

What the 1996 law really did was end, or begin to end, cash welfare payments. A common retort is that welfare clients also are eligible for Medicaid, which covers the costs of doctors, prescriptions and hospitals, and food stamps (now called SNAP -- for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).

Today's welfare-job package is called Ohio Works First. According to Athens County Job and Family Services Director Jack Frech ("freck"), "a typical Ohio family of two receives only $374 per month in Ohio Works First cash assistance and about $370 in food assistance benefits."

Even worse off are the 20 percent of Ohio families that receive food stamps but have no cash income. None. That's pretty grim.

Time was that Ohio's abolition of General Assistance (a nonfederal welfare program funded by Ohio's own budget) during Voinovich's era prompted demonstrations and protests. That was so even though the average General Assistance benefit was a fraction of federally funded welfare benefits. ("GA" aided Ohioans ineligible for federal benefits -- typically, single adults without children.) Time also was when Ohioans recognized that a society's worth is measured by how it treats its poor.

Frech and a plurality of Ohioans (a new Quinnipiac poll says) support and approve Republican Gov. John Kasich's bid to expand Medicaid, an expansion also favored by a number of other GOP governors, including, most recently, New Jersey's Chris Christie. (Other Republican governors favoring Medicaid expansion include Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder.)

Welcome as Medicaid expansion is, Ohioans getting scanty Ohio Works First cash assistance are hard-pressed to fund transportation to and from work assignments or to and from medical services. Thorough public transportation networks aren't common in rural Ohio. As for those Ohioans without any cash income at all, about all anyone could do is wish them good luck. Trouble is, for those poorest of Ohioans, luck is as scanty as ready cash.

"I got to tell you," Kasich said Feb. 19, in his State of the State address, which he delivered to a General Assembly session meeting in Lima, "I can't look at the disabled, I can't look at the poor, I can't look at the mentally ill, I can't look at the addicted and think we ought to ignore them.

"For those that live in the shadows of life, those who are the least among us, I will not accept the fact that the most vulnerable in our state should be ignored. We can help them. And I want all of you to think about this," Kasich said.

Obviously, though, not enough Ohio budget-writers, Kasich's own or the legislature's, have -- or do.

Suddes, a member of The Plain Dealer's editorial board, writes from Ohio University.

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